Robin Wauters

AMD / Red Hat Pull Off A Live Migration of VMs Across Vendor Platforms

November 10, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

AMD, in collaboration with Red Hat, today demonstrated for the first time “live migration” of a virtual machine across vendor platforms. Live migration enables the movement of running virtual machines (VMs) from one physical server to another without disrupting service to the end user, something that, till now, has only been demonstrated across systems based on one vendor’s platforms. Today’s live migration demonstration moves a live VM from an dual socket Intel Xeon DP Quad Core E5420-based system to a system based on the forthcoming 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, utilizing Red Hat’s high-performance open source virtualization software. See the demonstration on the AMD Unprocessed YouTube Channel or here.

Update: also, read the blog post from Margaret Lewis (Product Marketing Director at AMD) on the announcement.

Industry interest in live migration has grown as virtualization technology has become more widely adopted. Live Migration of VMs across physical servers is a vital component of data center management that enables IT managers to move VMs as necessary in order to perform tasks such as upgrading or conducting maintenance of a server, balancing the server load and proactively managing the server availability to avoid downtime or lost data. The demonstration illustrates AMD’s approach to an open and collaborative relationship with its partners to meet customer demands.

Industry Moves: Tony Asaro Out As Chief Strategy Officer For Virtual Iron

November 10, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

According to Alessandro, Virtual Iron just lost its Chief Strategy Officer Tony Asaro, although it seems he’s remaining a Senior Advisor to the company. We reported on his hiring nearly 8 months ago.

Asaro used to be a senior analyst and consultant for the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), in which role he worked as a trusted advisor to technology start-ups, emerging vendors and multi-billion dollar companies.

Sandeep Bhangi, Vice President of Corporate Development & Strategic Alliances, will be assuming his role from now on.

VMware Takes Virtualization To Mobile Phones

November 10, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VMware today announced plans to bring virtualization to mobile phones through the new VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP), reports The New York Times and plenty of others. Built on innovative technology acquired from Trango Virtual Processors in October 2008, VMware MVP should help handset vendors reduce development time and get mobile phones with value-added services to market faster. In addition, end users will benefit by being able to run multiple profiles – for example, one for personal use and one for work use – on the same phone.

We didn’t know about the acquisition of Trango VP, but we did write about the company before.

“VMware is excited to extend the benefits of virtualization, which we pioneered for x86 hardware, to the mobile phone market,” said Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer of VMware. “By abstracting the applications and data from the hardware itself, we expect that virtualization will not only enable handset vendors to accelerate time to market but can also pave the way for innovative applications and services for phone users. We look forward to working closely with our partners to bring new mobile solutions to market faster.”

VMware MVP is a thin layer of software that will be embedded on a mobile phone that decouples the applications and data from the underlying hardware. It will be optimized to run efficiently on low-power-consuming and memory-constrained mobile phones. The MVP is planned to enable handset vendors to bring phones to market faster and make them easier to manage.

As NYTimes writes:

You can bet that Intel, an investor in VMware, will back the technology. The chip maker has a new line of mobile device processors sold under the Atom brand.

Intel Cuts VMware Stake In Half

November 4, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

While Cisco is increasing its stake in VMware, Intel is reducing it. The company plans to sell the bulk of those shares on Tuesday, according to a regulatory filing.

Intel disclosed that it had recently sold 1 million shares in the virtualization software maker and plans to sell another 3.75 million VMware shares on the open market “approximately” on Tuesday.

The chipmaker originally paid $23 per share for the stock in a private placement. VMware shares hit a record high of $125.25 on October 31, 2007, after going public in August that year at $29 per share.

Shares of VMware, which is majority-owned by EMC, fell nearly 4 percent before recovering to trade up 0.53 percent at $31.98 in morning trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

Virtual Iron Joins LeftHand Networks’ Technology Alliance Program

November 4, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Virtual Iron Software today announced it has expanded its business relationship with LeftHand Networks by joining LeftHand’s Technology Alliance Program. Together, the companies offer enterprise-class server and storage virtualization capabilities to the mainstream market and enable more users to take advantage of the significant benefits of virtual infrastructure management.

Virtual Iron provides a comprehensive, enterprise-class server virtualization and management platform without the cost and complexity of comparable alternatives. LeftHand Networks leads the iSCSI SAN market and its SAN solutions built with the SAN/iQ storage software enable an infrastructure that enhances storage utilization, data protection and virtualized server availability. The combined solutions offer customers highly available and completely scalable virtualized server and storage environments that provide immediate improvements in resource utilization, simplified patch management, back up and disaster recovery for more cost-effective capacity management.

Acresso Announces AdminStudio Beta Support for Streamlining Microsoft App-V Deployments

November 4, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Acresso Software today announced at the Microsoft TechEd EMEA 2008 IT Professionals Conference that the AdminStudio application readiness solution will provide beta support in early 2009 for Microsoft’s Application Virtualization (App-V) solution. Today’s announcement makes Acresso the first and only vendor to offer built-in application virtualization preparation and packaging for the much-anticipated Microsoft App-V platform, enabling enterprise IT organization to further reduce application management costs.

AdminStudio automates processes so that IT teams can get up and running with application virtualization projects in less time. AdminStudio simplifies decision making regarding which applications are appropriate for virtualization, and enables rapid conversion of existing packages to the virtual format. In recent third party application virtualization benchmark tests, AdminStudio demonstrated up to a 60% time savings for preparing virtual applications for deployment compared to not using a professional packaging tool. Additionally, AdminStudio includes time saving management functions such as project tracking and application cataloging.

AdminStudio will be the first product to support a true conversion into the App-V format without the use of the native Microsoft Sequencer tool. Combining this capability with advanced support for the current industry-standard MSI format will offer enterprise IT organizations the flexibility they need to address current and future projects. The thousands of current AdminStudio customers will be able to fully support current application packages, and adopt virtualization at their own pace, using familiar tools and processes.